On the most Holy Day of the Nativity of the Lord when the King rose from praying at Mass before the tomb of biased Peter the Apostle, Pope Leo placed a crown on his head and all the Roman people cried out, “To Carolus, pious Augustus, crowned by God, great and peace giving Emperor of the Romans, life and victory.” And after the laudation he was honoured by the pope in the manner of the ancient princes and, the title of Patrician being set aside, he was called Emperor and Augustus.

Of all the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire the most renowned, the first to receive the golden Imperial Crown from the hands of the Roman Pontiff, no Emperor has so captured the Catholic imagination as Carolus Magnus, the Emperor Charlemagne. The beginning of the Sacred Ages might truly be dated to his coronation on the feast of the Nativity of Our Lord. Born on the second of April in the year of Our Lord 742 in the realm of Austrasia, Karol (as he was named in old Frankish) was the oldest son of Pippin the Short, King of Francia and Patrician of the Roman Empire. Upon the death of King Pippin in A.D. 768, Karol and his younger brother Karloman jointly ascended to the Frankish throne, in the midst of a rebellion in Aquitania.

It is when a fact is thus too big for history that it overflows the surrounding facts and expresses itself in fable. Nay, it is when the fact is in a sense too solid that its very solidity breaks the framework of ordinary things; and it can only be recorded through extraordinary things like fairy-tales and romances of chivalry. Everybody felt that merely saying that one Carolus or Carl had lived and died at a certain date, and had a palace at Aix, and fought such and such campaigns against Saxons or Saracens, was wholly inadequate to explain what had happened.

On this day (November 21) one hundred years ago (in 1916), His Majesty Franz Josef, Emperor of Austria, King of Bohemia, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Jerusalem (etc.), and heir of the Holy Roman Emperors, entered Eternal Life after a reign of sixty-eight years. He came to the throne amidst the fires of revolution, and died amidst the ashes of the Great War, and yet for the long years of his reign, his peoples were at peace and contented. So long as he ruled it, this last remnant of Christendom in Europe seemed as though it would last into the far distant future. And yet his own life was fraught with tragedy that might have brought lesser men to despair, the murder of his brother, of his only son, of his wife, and finally of his heir, and through it all he held firm to his God-given duties to his peoples.

However, the death of the old Emperor was not only a time of mourning, for it was also on this day that Archduke Karl ascended to the throne of the war-torn Empire; Emperor as was foretold by St. Pius X, and though most of his reign would be spent in exile, he was certainly a worthy successor of his great-uncle Franz Josef, blessed with same courage and devotion.

His Imperial Highness Archduke Eduard of Austria recently published an excellent article in the Catholic Herald, speaking of the recent Papal Audience with House of Austria, and including in this article a rather curious postscript;

I’d like to take this opportunity to reach out to our English-speaking friends and ask them always to write Habsburg with a “b”. The “Hapsburg” variant has been around since the 17th century, but that doesn’t make it the correct spelling. Thanks.

Now I intend no disrespect to the Archduke, but having made a thorough study of the etymology and orthography of the name of his most Noble House, I have found that the variant spelling is not only a correct spelling, but it in fact predates the Neuhochdeutsch “Habsburg” variant. This is not to say that the Imperial and Royal family ought not use the spelling “Habsburg,” but rather I intend to show through the orthographic history of the name that the spelling “Hapsburg” is in fact a correct and usable variation.

The decisive task of Christians consists in seeking, recognizing and following God’s will in all things. The Christian statesman, Charles of Austria, confronted this challenge every day. To his eyes, war appeared as “something appalling”. Amid the tumult of the First World War, he strove to promote the peace initiative of my Predecessor, Benedict XV.

From the beginning, the Emperor Charles conceived of his office as a holy service to his people. His chief concern was to follow the Christian vocation to holiness also in his political actions. For this reason, his thoughts turned to social assistance. May he be an example for all of us, especially for those who have political responsibilities in Europe today!- Pope St. John Paul II

These few sentences eloquently express the heroic life of Blessed Karl, the Last Emperor and King. Pope Saint Pius X said of him that he was “Heaven’s reward to Austria for all her faithfulness to Pope and Church.” He took his sacred duty as King-Emperor as it was meant to be taken. He magnificently conveyed the principle of Catholic Kingship: “I have done my duty, as I came here to do. As crowned King, I not only have a right, I also have a duty. I must uphold the right, the dignity and honor of the Crown…. For me, this is not something light. With the last breath of my life I must take the path of duty. Whatever I regret, Our Lord and Savior has led me.”

Going through my copy of Cardinal Seldon’s important and monumental work, Imperial History, I came across two very interesting full color illustrations. Both are texts in the form of stylized Sacretemporal (Medieval) Manuscripts, and both inscriptions are in Old High German. The inclusion of these illustrations in color suggests that the book was very expensive to print, though no records of the productions costs of this book can be found.

The first is the Sacretemporal (medieval) text of the Prophecy of Six Crowns (my translation of which can be found here), compiled from various chronicles into a single text. The text is found in the chapter entitled The Rise of the House of Austria, and underneath the text is a pseudo-heraldic symbol representing the Prophecy:

The second illustration contains the original Old German text of the enigmatic poem, Wolves with the hair of Ermine, which is (like the other text) followed by a series of pseudo-heraldic symbols, representing the first ,second, and fifth verses of poem, which is found in the chapter entitled The Fall of Rome:

The translation on the facing page reads:

Wolves with the hair of Ermine
Crows that are crowned as Kings
Though these things be many as vermin
ONE shall outlast these things

In the mountains an EAGLE shall rise
The Flag of the Desert shall burn
Renewed forever shall be old allies
And the KING TWICE CROWNED shall return

Surprisingly, no translation is given for the third stanza, which I can only assume is the lost stanza beginning A Sword shall be his token, in which case it is extremely interesting that no translation is given, as no complete version of the stanza is known to exist. It is also noteworthy that these verses are referenced as being attributed to a certain Blessed Heinrich Arnhold von Heiligwaldenstein, though no other records or mentions of this personage can be found.

After the death of Conradin, the grandson of the heretic Frederick II, the Empire was thrown into a lawless chaos now called the Interregnum. Men forsook the laws that had governed them and turned to robbery and violence, especially in the region of Southern Swabia (now Switzerland) near the High Rhine and the Aar. Below follows a proximate translation of the history of Count Rudolf IV von Hapsburg, taken from the Chronicon Helveticum (which in turn was taken from earlier sources such as the Chronik der Königsfelden ):

When Napoleon marched victoriously into Italy, his second-in-command was being forced back in defeat from the Rhine by none other than the Holy Roman Emperor’s own brother.

Considered one of the greatest military commanders of the Napoleonic Era, Archduke Karl Ludwig Johann was born on the fifth of September 1771, in the Duchy of Tuscany. His father, Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, then the Duke of Tuscany, sent him in his youth to live with his childless aunt and uncle in Vienna. He later moved to the Austrian Netherlands (modern-day Belgium), where he began his military career, fighting against the army of the Revolutionary French Republic. Continue reading →

Allegory of the Painting: The Common Man has been despoiled of the Authority and Protection of the Holy Crown, and now must bow to the self-serving Mob who stole it.

As I said in my last post (The Death of Civilization Part I), Civilization is a moral choice, a constant struggle. Part of that choice is to accept God-given Authority, for God is the Author of Authority. To preserve any good, we cannot reject the Authority of God’s Vicar, or the Authority of Church to confer Authority, or even the Authority of the State to Govern us, for all of these have their ultimate source in God.

Our Civilization is dying and among the symptoms of its fatality is the rejection of Authority, yet if we hold fast in submission to authority and to the ultimate Authority, Christ our King, our Civilization will not die.